Baroness Evans of Bowes Park: As I said, at the moment there is very good partnership working between independent and state schools. For instance, staff at Arundel School teach swimming lessons to pupils from 13 local primary schools; Oakham School, along with two state schools, has opened a new sixth form in Rutland and has helped to develop its A-level courses and offer facilities; and the Stem Academy at Latymer Upper School runs sessions for year 7 and 8 pupils at local state secondary schools. A lot of good work is going on. I think that the best way to ensure that all young people have a great education is to all pull together and make sure that all parents and children have access to a good local school so that young people can achieve what they want.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe: I thank noble Lords for tabling these important amendments and to the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, for his helpful explanation. It is good to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, to our consideration. As she said, she brings her experience as a DfID Minister, with whom I was happy to serve.
I will say by way of introduction that it is absolutely right that government departments, including of course the Ministry of Defence, and the Armed Forces work closely together in bringing this Bill through to implementation to make sure that they understand the obligations that ratification of the convention will place on them. I hope we were all reassured on Second Reading when I explained that both the MoD and the Armed Forces were fully supportive of the Bill—I repeat that for those of your Lordships who missed Second Reading—and that all our Armed Forces already act as if bound by the convention and both protocols, but the legislation and its implementing provisions are extremely important.
The Joint Service Manual of the Law of Armed Conflict is already updated periodically by military lawyers, who will ensure that the necessary rules, regulations, legislation and advice regarding the Hague convention and its two protocols are fully reflected in the manual once ratification has taken place. I do not believe it is necessary to place a legal requirement, as Amendment 5 seeks to do, on the Secretary of State to ensure that this happens.
Turning to Amendment 6, command appointments within our Armed Forces change regularly, so laying a list before Parliament of all ranking military commanders who are responsible for a Section 3 offence committed by forces under their effective command would quickly require updating or become obsolete. Commanders are responsible for ensuring compliance of their forces and forces under their control with a wide range of national and international legislation. Singling out the Hague convention as the only piece of domestic or international legislation where such a list is required could set an unhelpful precedent.
I turn to Amendments 7 and 8, the proposed new clauses on embedded forces and private military contractors. I think that their intended effect is already covered in the Bill and I have concerns about potential unintended consequences if we were to make the amendments. First, the Armed Forces Act 2006 provides that regular members of the Armed Forces remain subject to UK service law at all times. This includes times when they are under the command of another country. Embedded personnel would therefore still be within the definition in Clause 3 (6) of,
“person subject to UK service jurisdiction”,
and the Bill would apply to them in the same way as if they remained under UK command.
The noble Lords, Lord Touhig and Lord Howarth, talked about private military contractors. Such contractors and their individual staff are also already covered by the Bill and will be criminally liable in the same way as  any other legal or natural person. For example, should an employee of a private military contractor who is a UK national or subject to UK service jurisdiction commit an act abroad of a kind described in Article 15.1(d) or (e) of the Second Protocol, they could be criminally liable under Clause 3 on the same basis as any other person—so I think they are covered.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe: If the noble Lord will bear with me for a minute, I will see whether we can clarify that. In the meantime, I point to Clause 29, which ensures that senior management of private military contractors are personally liable for offences committed by their organisations if they consented or connived in the offence. This ensures that senior managers cannot escape the consequences of the actions of their organisations if they were personally involved in them—another reassurance.
I am also concerned that the amendment might have unintended consequences for this and other legislation. By making explicit reference to embedded forces and private military contractors in the Bill, we could risk creating doubt and confusion in the interpretation of both the Bill and other legislation. That is a general point that I have made already in relation to other amendments.
Turning to Amendment 9—forgive me for having to go through this in this degree of detail, but I think it is helpful ahead of Report—this suggests a new clause on reporting to Parliament on military measures. The joint military cultural property protection working group, which has been mentioned, is already working to review the current cultural property protection training within the UK Armed Forces. Those forces already act as if bound by the Hague convention, and respect for cultural property is upheld across the UK’s Armed Forces in military law, targeting policy, training, in-battle area evolution and assessment.
This review will ensure that we are fully compliant with all military obligations, including Article 7 under the Hague convention and its two protocols. This will be complemented once the UK becomes a high contracting party, which I think is three months after Royal Assent, with an implementation report every four years, as required by UNESCO, giving information of all the measures being taken to fulfil our obligations under the convention. Article 7 is one of a number of issues outlined by UNESCO which national authorities may wish to take into account when preparing their national reports. Having looked at this, I believe that these two reports will be sufficient to monitor our obligations under the convention and its protocols and to ensure they are fulfilled following ratification.
We talked about the working group at some length at Second Reading. It was established to develop the concept of a unit of cultural property protection specialists in accordance with our obligations under Article 7(2) of the convention. Some preliminary work has already been completed on this unit by Army command. It is expected that it will be able to form up 12 to 18 months after formal approval.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe: We have made this a priority. I was going to say that my noble friend Lady Berridge made a good point about the link to the police. We have the military—the monuments men whom we heard about last time, one of them a 100 year-old woman—and the police effort. Together they need to have adequate resource, as I explained last time. Although it is an operational decision for the Met, working with the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, to determine the available resources, in the spending review the Government pledged strong support for the police.
On the monuments men and the monuments lady in particular, I will come back to noble Lords on exactly what our plans are. The good news is that they are well geared up and are starting to recruit specialists into the Army Reserve pending final approval of the Bill now that we have, at last, found parliamentary time.
The working group will continue to provide updates on its progress, but I do not feel that a statutory requirement on the Secretary of State to produce a report a year after the Act is passed would be appropriate at such an early stage of its development. I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, talked about the penalties when he spoke about whether the clause should stand part. Concerns have been expressed about the 30-year term. To some degree, I sympathise. I felt that when I saw the provisions. I am pleased to say that officials have now outlined the detailed reasons behind the approach, and I agree with their reasoning. The introduction of the penalty is considered appropriate to comply with Article 15(2) of the second protocol, which obliges parties to adopt measures necessary to establishing in their domestic law criminal offences as set out in Article 15(1) of the same protocol and to make them punishable by appropriate penalties. While at first sight it may seem surprising that an offence of this nature and ancillary offences, such as attempting or conspiring, attract the same maximum penalty as war crimes, this flows naturally from the seriousness with which these offences are considered in international law. It is worth noting, as the noble Lord acknowledged, that this is a maximum penalty. In practice, the penalty may be a much shorter sentence or even a fine and the maximum sentence is likely to be reserved for only the most heinous crimes against cultural property.
The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, asked whether we have consulted the Sentencing Council. We have not consulted it, but we will certainly look into this. I also thank the noble Lord for raising this point.
There are a number of important amendments in this group. The military is already very much behind this work, and we are gearing up for further work following the Bill’s passage—smoothly and rapidly, I hope—through the two Houses of Parliament, if that is possible these days. I will write to noble Lords with a little more detail about the working group.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe: My Lords, I am grateful for this interesting debate and for the amendments that have been laid. I should perhaps start by responding to the broader point that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, made and which my noble friend Lord Renfrew and the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, endorsed about the idea of a third protocol. I venture to say that in discussing the possibility of a third protocol, we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves. I think that we had all-party support for concentrating and pushing through rapidly a Bill so that, at last, the United Kingdom could ratify the existing convention and the existing protocols. This would make us the only permanent member of the UN Security Council to have ratified the convention and both protocols, and that would put us in a strong position as regards the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict, particularly when you look at other provisions that I will come on to mention. It also will allow us to attend meetings of state parties where we can discuss issues relating to the implementation and operation of the convention and the protocols. But I do not think it is the day to agree to a major new initiative for a third protocol.
I do think I should say something, however, about the application of the law to Syria, which is an important issue that is underlying this idea. I was clear at Second  Reading that the UK does not recognise Daesh as a state and so the Bill’s application to Syria and other civil wars is limited. The dealing offence in Clause 17 does not apply to Syria because it only covers unlawfully exported cultural property from occupied territories, as we have all said.
Under international law, territory could be occupied only by another state. As, rightly, we do not recognise Daesh as a state, Syria cannot be classed as occupied territory. However, as my noble friend Lady Berridge said, this does not represent a serious gap in our provisions because sanctions already exist for cultural property removed from Syria since March 2011, and dealing in cultural property exported from Syria is prohibited under UK law. So a UK national fighting with Daesh in Syria can be prosecuted under our Bill in relation to,
“theft, pillage or misappropriation of, and any acts of vandalism directed against, cultural property”,
protected under the convention. To expand or extend this application would, of course, be a serious over- implementation of the convention in UK legislation. That, of course, is not the purpose of the Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, asked about the cultural protection fund. We have published a statement on that fund, as I am sure that he knows. It opened for applications on 27 June—so it has just opened—and one of three priority areas is cultural heritage protection. Organisations can apply to the fund to carry out projects, including those that digitalise cultural heritage. Noble Lords have already noted that the British Museum is involved in a very impressive £3 million project, which I hope that we will learn a lot from.
On the third protocol idea, I should add that no other state party has called for it. These are international matters—it is not just the UK; other countries are involved.
Perhaps I can comment on the amendment, ahead of Report. Article 19 of the convention would apply only in event of,
“an armed conflict not of an international character occurring within the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties”.
The article does not impose a one-off obligation—it is an ongoing commitment—and there may not be anything to report on if the report is to be published within one year of the passing of this Act. In the event that the UK was party to a conflict,
“not of an international character occurring within the territory”,
of one of the state parties, the UK would be bound as a minimum by the obligations set out in the convention, which relate to respect for cultural property.
The main obligation under Article 19 is to respect cultural property, which would mean that, during a non-international armed conflict, our Armed Forces would have to seek to avoid exposing cultural property to damage or destruction during the conflict. Our Armed Forces would also be obliged to prevent theft, pillage and vandalism of cultural property. The practice of our Armed Forces is already to take a rigorous approach to protect cultural property in this way during the course of an international armed conflict, and ratifying the convention will not impose additional obligations.
On reporting in general, as I have already said in relation to another amendment, the convention requires that state parties report at least every four years to the director-general of UNESCO with,
“whatever information they think suitable concerning any measures being taken, prepared or contemplated by their respective administrations in fulfilment of the present Convention and of the Regulations for its execution”.
This is, of course, public information. It is right to report every four years; it provides up-to-date information about the implementation and operation of the convention, regulations and protocols in our country. I do not think that annual reports would add much to the four-yearly reporting cycle under the protocol. Obviously, in some years there will not be anything to report.
I hear what noble Lords say about wishing to have good information on this and to build up momentum for change internationally, but I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment so that we can focus on the Bill and making progress today.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe: I am very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for raising this issue and giving rise to this useful debate. I know he has extensive experience of the art insurance market and am grateful that he gave up time to take us through that and to try and find a way forward, because we are obviously keen, as I keep saying, to progress the Bill. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, for his comments.
I acknowledge the concern that the noble Earl raises that those who deal with cultural property, whether in museums, insurance companies or shipping companies, should understand what they must do in order to comply with the Bill and with the convention and its protocols. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, also asked how people are supposed to know that they are acting properly, and I will explain some of the things that will happen.
The Collections Trust, on behalf of Arts Council England, provides extensive guidance for museums, collectors, dealers and others on compliance with the legal requirements relating to cultural property, including on conducting due diligence to establish provenance and on related moral and ethical issues. There is a section on the Collections Trust website that references the 1954 Hague convention and its obligations. A wide range of other organisations also provide advice and guidance to their members and sectors on these issues.
These organisations are best placed to provide expert advice on how to go about determining whether an object is unlawfully exported cultural property. The Bill does not require those dealing with cultural property to do anything they do not already do. Conducting due diligence and determining the provenance of cultural property is an established part, I am glad to say, of what museums, collectors, dealers, insurers and others do in this country, which is of course one of the reasons we have great museums and a buoyant art market. The questions of whether cultural property was exported before or after a particular date and whether it was exported from an occupied territory are part of the broader and more basic question of whether it was lawfully exported at all. This is the key point on which anyone dealing with cultural property will want to satisfy themselves.
What would constitute “reasonable” procedures will vary from case to case depending on the particular circumstances, and it is difficult to issue one-size-fits-all regulations. This is true in other areas too, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, suggested. We will work with Arts Council England, the Collections Trust and other stakeholders to ensure that clear guidance is available and up to date, to help all those who deal with cultural property to understand and comply with the Bill. I will make sure that my department ensures that the information available in relation to the Bill including that on websites—as we have discussed, we now have to have things on websites in relation to every bit of legislation—fully reflects the requirements of the Bill.
Amendment 30A relates to Clause 29(3). Clause 29 is a standard clause which appears in numerous pieces of legislation and has been the subject of interpretation by the courts. For example, there is similar provision in the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003, and I would hesitate to amend this, for reasons of consistency. The intention of such a clause is to ensure that senior officers of a company who are personally involved in an offence can be held personally responsible and cannot escape liability by hiding behind the company.
I understand that the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, is concerned, as perhaps are others, as to whether “manager” might, in a large organisation, cover relatively junior employees in management roles. I am advised that this phrase has been considered by the courts, which have determined that “manager” refers only to those in a position of real authority as regards the company’s affairs and not to those merely responsible for day-to-day management of part of the business. It is therefore the most senior company officers who might be held liable under this clause. In any event, the key point to note is that liability will arise only if the individual has personally consented to or connived in the offence.
I will pick up two or three of the other points made. First, loaning of items is obviously important. We all like the free flow of objects around the world for galleries. The Government consider that the likelihood that cultural property owned by a reputable institution or collector might be unlawfully exported cultural property is extremely small. Museums, being what they are, already research and consider the provenance of cultural property and assess the risk that it has been  stolen and/or unlawfully exported from another state. This is covered in existing codes of practice, such as the Code of Ethics for Museums and its supporting guidance published by the Museums Association. We would be concerned about providing a safe harbour or carve-out from the Bill. We do not want to risk creating a loophole which could be exploited by the unscrupulous and do not think that any particular group should be given special treatment.
My noble friend Lord Inglewood, who knows so much about the art market under many different hats, had concerns about the mens rea issue. In response, I can say that my officials have met the British Art Market Federation to discuss its reservations about the drafting of the dealing offence in the Bill and the potential implications for the art market. We expect dealers to conduct thorough due diligence in line with the industry standards, which require that members undertake not to purchase, sell or offer any item of property that they know has been illegally exported. It is vital that the mens rea offence of dealing in unlawfully exported cultural property should be sufficient to encourage good practice in due diligence, rather than have the unintended effect of discouraging dealers from carrying out such inquiries. We are talking about the right motivation and decent information. I hope that my noble friend will feel that that that is what is necessary, but I would of course be happy to meet to discuss the issue if he has remaining concerns, because of the importance of the art market.
I hope that I have responded to the various points raised and that the noble Earl will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

Earl of Clancarty: My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 18 in this group, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, for their support for this amendment.
I am attacking the problem from the other end to the noble Lord, Lord Collins. The purpose of the amendment is to remove the long-standing culture of secrecy in the art and antiques trade in the UK, which is a hindrance to the protection of cultural property. London is the second-biggest antiquities market in the world and is perhaps the biggest for Islamic objects. Last year, UNESCO stated that looting in the Middle East is operating on an industrial scale. We know that  there is significant illegal trade in London in antiquities from the Middle East from considerable anecdotal evidence and from undercover research, such as that carried out for the excellent Channel 4 “Dispatches” programme, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, referred at Second Reading, in which Dick Ellis, the founder and former head of the Metropolitan Police art and antiques Unit, which the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, and the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, referred to earlier, said that the current three-person team of that unit is simply not large enough to deal with the problem.
I say at the outset that the antiques trade and auction houses do an important job. I am not against the trade, which according to the British Art Market Federation’s website, was worth £9 billion in 2014. Indeed, I am one of a large number of people up and down the country who have bought items at auction, of whatever value. However, the convention of maintaining the secrecy of both sellers and buyers is wrong, and runs counter to everything that art historians and archaeologists try to do, which is to build a historical record and discover the provenance of an object. It is worth saying that the major part of the meaning of cultural property lies in its provenance, often as part of that property’s original environment. Where art historians, experts in ancient manuscripts and other experts try to lift the lid on history, the art and antiques trade obfuscates. Auction houses sometimes provide provenance—sometimes whole auctions will be dedicated to the sale of items owned by a particular celebrity collector, for example. However, the auction houses do this selectively when it suits them, when it is clear that it gives a sale a particular cachet; it is not the general rule.
To peg this amendment to the Bill, it is rightly framed in terms of looted property, but there are other reasons to have the amendment. There is the protection of our own cultural property to consider, whether or not it is looted, and we should not be complacent about that protection. I stand corrected by the Minister when she said at Second Reading that there had been one prosecution under the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003—just one, it has to be added, in the last 13 years. My substantive point, which was that there had been no prosecutions for looting in the Middle East—the purpose for which the Act was set up in the first place—still holds. The one prosecution, which happened in the last few weeks, is of someone who stole religious artefacts from churches in the UK. Nevertheless, this is instructive in itself, since to make this looting worth while there have to be buyers for such stolen property.
The art and antiques trade of course says that it is doing what it can to tighten up checks on provenance internally and adheres to its voluntary code of due diligence, but that is not good enough—we need transparency. We expect transparency in so many other walks of life, and we should expect it in the dealing of cultural objects. This brings me to the third good reason for this amendment, which is simply that it is an issue of consumers’ rights. Thinking in particular about the possibility of introducing object passports, I do not see why, if in the instance of buying a car we have the right to know its history and previous owners,  and have a logbook as proof of that, we do not grant the same rights for the purchase of an artefact above a certain market value. What is it about being a seller or a buyer that is so shameful that one cannot be revealed to the other, let alone to the rest of the public? When I have bought something at an auction, or even wanted to, what I want to hear from the auction house if I ask them for information on the item is not, “Oh, we can’t tell you who the seller is, sir, we have to protect their confidentiality, but we will absolutely provide you with as much information as possible about the object’s history”. Until we have a culture of openness, one that will allow the object to be tracked back from the current buyer, however that purchase is made—of course many purchases are now made online—we have an unhelpfully secretive art and antiques market that breaks the links of the historical record for the object at every transaction in its history.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Noble Lords have rightly emphasised today that we need to be transparent and open about the cultural protection fund. It is absolutely right that this House has the opportunity to  understand how the fund is supporting the work of cultural heritage protection at risk of, or already damaged by, conflict.
We established the £30 million fund in response to acts of cultural destruction and damage. I am pleased to say that the fund is now live and open for applications. It is always difficult, even in normal times, to make budgetary promises but I can say that we are very committed to this area, and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, made some important points. We also monitor and report on the fund throughout its operation to ensure that it is successfully meeting the object of protecting cultural heritage affected by damage and destruction. In line with these general objectives, the Government will publish an annual report. Alongside this, the spend will be scrutinised and published by the OECD—all the more important an institution now given the way that things are going—on a biannual basis.
If the fund has any direct relevance to today’s legislation, we will make sure that that is included in the report. For example, there is an obligation in the second protocol to take measures in peacetime to safeguard cultural activity. This may include activity such as the preparation of inventories which could potentially be awarded funding.
The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, asked about the central team in London and made wider points. I will pass her points on to the British Council. She was kind enough to refer to the letter that I wrote to the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter. This covered some important points on Yemen, the cultural protection fund and its future, work with the British Council and the division of work on emergency response and long-term support. Given the lateness of the hour, I think the easiest thing I can do is to circulate copies to noble Lords so that they can see it, and make sure that a copy is in the Library of the House. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for cross-referencing that and delighted that it was found to be useful.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, asked about the British Council and its specialist assessors. I am sure he will be glad to know that it is currently collating a wide pool of specialist assessors who will be drawn upon to advise on specific projects. As well as this, sector experts will be drawn upon at intervals to sense check and advise on the general direction of the fund.
I see this cultural protection fund as a great opportunity. I think that it complements the Bill that we are putting forward. I hope that in the circumstances the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw this amendment.